 |
| Richard Lester (fourth from the left) and the Beatles |
Richard Lester (1932), American film director, was a child prodigy, who began university at the age of 15. Then he started in television in 1950, and in 1953 he became director in independent television in London with Peter Sellers. In 1964 The Beatles chose him as film director of A Hard Day’s Night which proved to be an effective marketing tool (efficace strumento commerciale); his multi-angle way of a live performance (modo di girare un film dal vivo) represented an innovative way to make music videos and Lester won an award (premio) from MTV as “Father of the Music Video”. Lester shot (girò) another film with The Beatles, Help! in 1965 and How I Won the War (1967) co-starring John Lennon, an “anti-anti-war movie” set (che ha luogo) during World War II but as a matter of facts (in realtà) is an oblique reference to the Vietnam War: Lester wanted to show war as fundamentally opposed to humanity. In the 1970s, Lester directed the disaster film Juggernaut, Robin and Marian, starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn and Cuba, also starring Connery; The Three Musketeers and its sequel The Four Musketeers are considered his masterpieces. In 1978 appeared the first film of the Superman saga – at first Richerd Donner was called as a director but soon Lester was placed behind the camera (fu posto dietro la telecamera). After the third Superman movie , in 1988, Lester reunited the entire Musketeers cast to film another sequel, The Return of the Musketeers. Unfortunately during filming in Spain, actor Roy Kinnear, a close friend of Lester, died falling from a horse and unofficially retired from directing.